Sweet Smell of Success, a revival of the musical adaptation of a 1957
Hollywood film about a powerful New York gossip columnist, makes for a
compelling watch, writes Dominic Cavendish.

Imagine a New York gossip columnist so powerful that if you don’t make it onto his avidly read pages then you’ve as much chance of becoming a “somebody” as the average downtown dosser.

It doesn’t require a big leap: 10 years ago, when Nicholas Hytner premiered Marvin Hamlisch’s musical adaptation of the 1957 Hollywood film Sweet Smell of Success, which showed the celebrity world in thrall to JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), most of all the craven showbiz press agent Sidney Falcone (Tony Curtis), it only took the New York Times to let out a sniff (“less compellingly dark than simply muddy”) for the Broadway newcomer to catch a fatal cold.

By a strange quirk of timing, John Lithgow – who starred as Hunsecker in that production – is opening at the National in The Magistrate at the same moment that Sweet Smell receives its UK premiere at the Arcola. I imagine he’ll be gratified to see the show coming up smelling of roses here: this is a compelling evening, brilliantly staged by the Arcola’s artistic director Mehmet Ergen, with compact choreography by Nathan M Wright. And while composer Marvin Hamlisch hasn’t alas lived to see his last opus flourish – he died in August – the topicality of this revival, coming in the wake of the hacking scandal, totally vindicates his interest in the story.

The jazzy pulse of the score (with lyrics by Craig Carnelia), and the frenetic, knotty pace of the plot (book by John Guare) are snappily and stylishly served by a bustling company of 16, conjuring a nocturnal world of dog-eat-dog intrigue, muckraking speculation and lethally contagious cynicism.

David Bamber’s reptilian JJ looks old enough to be the father of his sister Susan (picture-book pretty Caroline Keiff) – but that only adds creepiness to his possessiveness, which drives him to seek the destruction of her relationship with the aspiring, integrity-rich singer-pianist Dallas (Stuart Matthew Price). As Sidney – described by his waspish-witted mentor JJ as “a cookie full of arsenic” – Adrian der Gregorian may not have Curtis’s looks but he absolutely draws you into the wannabe hotshot’s grasping mindset and his increasingly sweaty dilemmas. Watch out too for Celia Graham, sensational as his girlfriend Rita – sacrificed on the altar of his Faustian ambition.